


Four Seasons

by spacemagic



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Rise of Kyoshi
Genre: (and many other kisses), F/F, First Kiss, Mild Hurt/Comfort, they're in love and very soft and i adore them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26510383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: Four kisses for four seasons, as Kyoshi and Rangi fall for each other. Set around Rise of Kyoshi.Written forRangshi Week 2020. Prompt: Kisses.
Relationships: Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 96





	Four Seasons

\--Spring--

_(easy)_

Spring is supposed to be this easy, breezy thing – so why is her heart fluttering, the buzz of a butterfly-koi's wings, too bright, too loud, too present? It's just a quick kiss, a brush on the cheek. It shouldn't be bothering her this much. She could do it.

There.

Rangi goes from a soldier's composure to red and hot and spluttering and Kyoshi realises then and there what it is: a mistake. Six and a half feet of girl are turned into blustering and blunt excuses: it wasn't – she hadn't – she couldn't – she wouldn't – _I’m sorry_ –

It was all Yun's fault (which it was and it wasn't, really). Yun had been the line at which they'd been drawn together, a conjunction of stubborn girls at right angles. He'd planted the idea like spring seeds under a temperate sun, gentle winds. Just a quick kiss, he had told her. She'd like it. She likes you. I promise. All easy, breezy words and smiles.

It doesn’t work, of course. She’s only Kyoshi. Yun’s charms make her feel like more than that, but they’re just tricks of the tongue – illusions – and sweetened words can’t cover for the bitter truth. She’s only Kyoshi. And now she’s in a state, her insides twisting and turning into knots of knots, the roots of something taking hold. She feels her heart quicken at the thought of her, her and the softness of her cheek she’d barely touched. It’s all too much. 

The sturdy voice that knows that things will eventually come to crumbs tells her it won't always be this fast, free-falling. The seasons will pass. Love isn't always temperate. What is a kiss? Fleeting as the blossoms.

  
  
  
  


\--Summer--

_(strain)_

In Yokoya, Summer is work without relent: it is sweltering and it is back-breaking and it is the static building, calloused hands shaking before the rivers burst their banks and the fields flood over. In Yokoya, Summer feels like dried mud and smells like stale fish before the storms batter up the coast and the rains come. In Yokoya, summer is heavy, summer is two weeks, three weeks, four weeks of supplies packed into sacks, a strain on your arms and your feet as you hurry to throw them onto a fretting bison's back, the winds chimes sing shrill, the skies cloud and all thoughts of meadows and sunflowers and bee-stings and sly kisses are gone, as you race to pick up every piece of your lives worth keeping before there is lightning and there is thunder and there is rain.

Yun is dead, and everything feels wrong.

Rangi soars straight through the direct flight path of a storm, because Kyoshi tells her they have to like a frightened bird, cawing out instructions. She’s coiled up inside like a spring, every word is tense and tight and frightened, like something’s about to snap–

“What do you _mean_ you have _no idea_ _where you’re going, Kyoshi?_ ” 

“I lost track of the flight path!” Kyoshi shouts back, as thunder crackles in the distance. “I can’t _see_ where we’re going – the storm’s too heavy, the maps are soaked – have you ever _navigated_ on a bison before in a storm?”

Rangi turns around to glare.

“Kyoshi. I’m going to move to land.”

“ _You can’t._ ”

Her knuckles are white and her words lash out and everything is soaked through and everything about this picture is desperate. Rangi knows that she’d let the rain come in, batter her, strip her down until there’s nothing left but grief.

“I have to fly lower. I know you don’t want to be seen, but it’s too much of a risk.”

Kyoshi does not relent. “He _can't see us_ , Rangi. He _can’t_.”

“ _We’ll die_ if we stay up here,” says Rangi. Then, more softly, but still with some bite: “Kyoshi, I can’t let you get shot out of the sky _by lightning_.”

Not after all of this.

Not after how much all of this hurts.

In Yokoya, summer is the fear of how the storms will come roaring, and wash everything soft and gentle away. They land, because Rangi insists, and finds shelter in the mouth of a cave. They sit, side by side, Rangi and Kyoshi, two very drenched girls trying to hold in shivers, the cold biting at them. As they plot out an alternate course across splattered and ruined maps, as Kyoshi tries not to tremble too much, Rangi takes hold of her hands and keeps them safe and warm in hers. She thinks of kissing them. She thinks of kissing them, each knuckle, each fingertip. Each touch a reminder: I’m here. I’m not leaving. I wouldn’t leave you, not for the world.

She takes her hand and presses it to her mouth.

A kiss can be a comforting thing, even as the world is crashing down.

  
  
  


\--Autumn--

_(oath)_

It’s autumn, before dusk, and there’s a cold snap in the air. The birds are quiet. They’re running through a forest of birch trees, silvery eyes bored into the bark catching a glimpse of them as they rush past, red leaves carpeting over their tracks, stomachs churning, hearts racing, their hands clutching each other. They won’t let go of each other now. They’re in it now. Before the sun slips below the horizon, they stop and steal a look at each other in their new colours, in the last moments of light.

Red and white. It’s all red and white.

White trees, white faces. White, worn for treachery, worn for wickedness, worn for the willingness to look death square on in the eye, to hold that prospect in your grasp – something Rangi had scoffed at, but painted her face with nevertheless. They were outlaws, now, troublemakers, partners in crime, the two of them, along with their sworn siblings. _Daofei_. It’s less romantic than it sounds.

They stop, steal a look at each other, and catch their breath.

Red leaves, red gazes. Red for boldness. Red for honour. Red for all your loyalty, all the trust held between each other, held in the oaths you’ve taken, always at the edge of every look, every glance, every time their eyes would meet. Perhaps that’s romantic. Trust bleeds into love very easily. She hasn’t let go yet.

Kyoshi reaches to touch Rangi’s painted face. Her fingers brush against the white of her cheek. Rangi smiles, and kisses the red of her lips back hungrily. Kyoshi has kissed her before, but those were shy, teasing kisses, half-suggestion, half-doubt. She’s never been kissed like this, kissed like she’s the direction, she’s the compass, she’s the arrow they follow. 

“Ugh, the paint tastes disgusting.”

Kyoshi doesn’t hide her snort. “Serves you right. You know what that stuff’s made of.” She almost shakes her head. “What was even that _for_ , Rangi?”

“ _What was even that for?_ ” she mocks. She looks her directly in the eye. “It’s for _you_. I want you.”

She’s sincere.

They’re about to break the law. It feels like lightning in a bottle. This isn’t what their lives are supposed to look like. The era of Kyoshi was done all wrong, a time of fear, a time of uncertainty, half the rulebook ripped to pieces, with regard for only the worst traditions, she thinks, loyalty only for thieves and fools. Her hand begins to move away from Rangi’s cheek.

Rangi grabs it.

“I want you,” she repeats. “Kyoshi. Don’t.”

Kyoshi frowns, but doesn’t pull away further. Her voice becomes something small, almost hushed. “Are you sure you want to be dragged into this mess – into _my_ mess?”

“Yes. I swore an oath–”

_“To the Avatar.”_

“–and I’d swear it again. To you, Kyoshi. I’d follow you until the end.”

Kyoshi does not know what to say.

What would Yun say? Seal it with a kiss. Kyoshi doesn’t have his way with words. A kiss as an oath: a romantic notion, one that feels somewhat out of place in this ill-fated era of Kyoshi. She pictures kissing the hands of so-called sages who steal more than most can carry with the law’s jurisdiction, and she feels her fingers burn. She’s not that Avatar.

She steps closer to Rangi. She _wants_ to kiss her. Not as she cups the white of her cheek, soft and reticent, from that blossom-scented memory. She feels the damp beneath her feet soaking through her boots and her chest heaving, breathing too loud and ragged for courts and ballrooms. She’s shaking. She wants to close the distance, to wrap her up in her kiss, to seize that uncertainty spiking inside of her, to draw a line from herself to her best friend (her love) of her own, as firm as a backbone, a place where she can hold her and know _it’s right_. She wants to kiss the red off her lips.

She takes her face into her hands and kisses her in a way that cannot be mistaken, in a way that can’t be taken back.

“You’re right. That _does_ taste disgusting.”

Rangi laughs. And Kyoshi kisses her again, smearing her war paint, as she lets all her laughter fall into her mouth.

They’ll rewrite the rules as they go. The Era of Kyoshi started off all wrong but they’ll make it right. They’re sworn to each other now.

  
  


\--Winter--

_(ground)_

Kyoshi has caught lightning and Rangi has been taken away, kidnapped, her hair shorn as a warning. They’ve known what it is to suffer and fear too much at too young and sometimes what they’d prefer to forget surfaces in the still of night.

It’s winter, now. Rangi is curled up in Kyoshi’s bedroll, curled up in Kyoshi’s arms. The steadfast protector and the littlest spoon, who is now cuddled as fiercely as she bites. The chill air, the mist rolling, the frost glinting on the grass outside all seem unthinkable when she is with her, with Kyoshi’s arms around her waist and her lips at her shoulder and her hair a soft pillow.

“Rangi,” she whispers, in the crook of her neck. “Rangi, love.”

That’s her. She’s the loved one, the dearest, held close with every swell of her chest and every soft sigh and every kiss as her fingers fall through her hair. It is not out of a dream; it’s always how it should have been, they’ve always known each other, they’ve always followed each other, they’ve always refused to let go.

“It’s just a dream,” Rangi says. Too quick, too deliberate. “Just another damn dream.”

The panic spiralling in her head doesn’t belong here. The shortness of her breath isn’t right, the palpitations of her heart aren’t allowed either. Not here, where it’s safe. Not here, with Kyoshi.They belong to a different time and place and yet sometimes it is difficult to put it back in its box when the cold of winter comes.

Kyoshi kisses her shoulder gently. It’s so warm. _I'm here,_ it says.

“Stay,” says Rangi, quietly. “Stay here. Please.”

Kyoshi kisses her again. Her kisses, on these nights, are gentle and constant and grounding, a touch to remind her, to place her feet back to the earth, away from dreamy mists and far-away panic, to what is close, what is near, and what is dear. To Kyoshi.

“Of course,” she says. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gay and I love Rangshi and that's most of what I have to say. (also: I just love the idea of Yun trying to wingman for Kyoshi and absolutely not accounting for Kyoshi's chronic lack of self-confidence.)
> 
> You can follow me here: [ATLA Tumblr](https://zuzuslastbraincell.tumblr.com/)


End file.
